Darren Waterston

"Darren Waterson's early paintings were interpretations of conventional landscape imagery, depicted as meditations on fertility and decomposition. Examples of the early work appear in this book, but the majority of the paintings are from a more recent period where he shifts the focus of the work away from decaying abstraction into one of exoticism, decadence, and an underlying erotic sensuality. Waterson uses traditional painting materials and techniques, and the multiple layers of paint that are the foundation for his works infuse them with a wet, atmospheric quality. He also has an acute interest in the aesthetics of the East, and motifs of the Orient punctuate every picture. The paintings that at first appear quite ethereal and whimsical upon further investigation reveal a sensuality combining a poetic language of flora and fauna with an overt observation about the human body and other creatures. The result is a complex layering of opposing forces: beautiful and unsettling, appealing and revealing, extroverted and introspective."